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A TxDOT poster board presented the plan to take a section of a DISD building parking lot. (Tristan Hallman/Staff)

A new tweak to the S.M. Wright Freeway and Interstate 45 overhaul would nix a portion of a historic building’s parking lot, Texas Department of Transportation officials said Thursday at a public hearing in South Dallas.

The Dallas ISD maintenance building, formerly a Procter and Gamble plant, is eligible for the National Register of Historic Places. TxDOT spokesman Mark Pettit said the Dallas ISD legal team is reviewing the proposal, but has not formally responded.

“We hope it’s just a matter of dotting I’s and crossing T’s,” he said.

The original designs would have eliminated an exit to Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard and Pennsylvania Avenue. Public complaints led city councilwoman Carolyn Davis and other officials to demand changes, which increased the cost of the project to $165 million from $150 million.

The plan was met with plaudits by many in the packed community hearing. And Davis said Thursday that she hopes construction, which will begin next year barring unexpected delays, can now go full-speed ahead.

"Dead Man's Curve" on US 175, as seen in May 2010, is where C.F. Hawn Freeway (bottom, far right) curves sharply to become S.M. Wright Freeway (vertical line going north towards Dallas).

The proposed $151 million overhaul to the S.M Wright Freeway — and it’s infamous “Dead Man’s Curve” — now has the approval of the Federal Highway Administration as an effort that “would fulfill the public’s need for a safe and efficient transportation system.”

But even as the feds OK’d the project in an environmental assessment released this week — saying it would have “no significant impacts to the quality of the human or natural environmental” — officials want to allow the public one more chance to give feedback.

The Texas Department of Transportation will host a public hearing Jan. 31 in South Dallas to discuss the project, which would eliminate “Dead Man’s Curve,” connect C.F. Hawn Freeway to Interstate 45 and turn S.M. Wright into a landscaped, six-lane boulevard.

The overhaul, which involves planners taking the unusual step of tearing down a freeway, is slated to begin construction next year.

“There’s been a huge amount of community involvement,” TxDOT spokesman Mark Pettit. “We just want to make sure it’s going to be what they want it to be and meets their needs.”

As Michael Lindenberger reported in August, some community organizers feel like the project could do more for the community:

Robert Foster, who lives half a mile from S.M. Wright Freeway, asks: Why not bring people to South Dallas instead of through it?

“A community in need of jobs and new families raises the question of building a four-lane street with parking, wide sidewalks, apartments and townhomes, shopping and offices that will promote economic renewal,” Foster said.

But TxDOT says the six-lane road is necessary to account for the nearly 40,000 cars that will still use S.M. Wright, even with most of the traffic rerouted to I-45. Dallas City Council member Carolyn Davis and other key leaders support the six-lane plan.

And the Federal Highway Administration’s environmental assessment outlines how the current plan takes pains to avoid or minimize impacts on the surrounding community.

So it will be interesting to get a feel for the crowd at the Jan. 31 meeting, which will be held at 5 p.m. at the Park South YMCA, 2500 Romine Ave., Dallas, TX 75215. In the meantime, you can read after the jump the FHWA’s 399-page report, described as a “must read” by Robert Wilonsky.